Tag Archives: health care

Word coming down the anecdotal (and now non-anecdotal) grapevine is that Obamacare is a developing nightmare. No one knows how it’s going to work in the long run, or the short run for that matter. There seems to be pain at every level. From the patients who have no idea what they are covered for, what a deductible is etc., to doctors who are increasingly just dropping out and retiring, things are not going well. Billing is more difficult. Compliance is more difficult. Margins are being squeezed. Quality of care is going down. All while liability risk is increasing. A bouillabaisse of dysfunction.

Not surprising. I know a number of people in the medical field, mostly on the logistics side who are up in arms over Obamacare. Nobody knows what all the coding is. The codes coming in are all wrong. There are too many codes. Doctors aren’t being compensated correctly. Patients are confused as to who is paying for what. And I live where people are relatively savvy as to healthcare issues. I’m just down the road from a large medical school. I can only imagine what it’s like in other parts of the country.

Earlier today the DC Circuit Court ruled that those who buy health insurance through the federal healthcare exchange (Healthcare.gov) are not eligible for offsetting subsidies. The ruling came careening out of nowhere and it hammers the Obamacare law.

The American Medical Association claims to represent doctors. But it is very much part of the crony coalition which put together the broad outlines of Obamacare in meetings inside the White House. In return for going along with the government, the association receives most of its funding from a medical coding monopoly granted and protected by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The American people, nearly all the American people, don’t want to bail out the health insurers because of Obamacare. They also disapprove of the individual mandate which flies in the face of 200 years of American law.

Note: On Tuesday, June 10, 2014 the U.S. House voted 426-00 to end VA bonuses. The “cook the books” crony culture of VA bonuses wasn’t unearthed by their executives or auditors, but by a doctor in Phoenix, AZ…

A month after Congressional hearings and the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, the VA finally disclosed just how systemically routine the delays in treatment were for veterans. Their internal audit showed 70% of facilities used non-compliant appointment scheduling to make their official numbers look better. Since 2011, 56,000 returning veterans had to wait three months for a doctor’s appointment and 65,000 vets never actually got to see a doctor.

“If one person comes up with a way to cheat on a report to the government and profit from that lie, that’s defrauding the government,” the whistleblower said. “If [hundreds] of people are defrauding the government, it’s a conspiracy, and that’s what you’ve got now and it runs coast to coast and bottom to top.”